They are scattered about the steps and lawns. A knot of people puzzling over the relationship between education and politics. Sari-clad women practicing Brazilian martial arts. A group of home-schooled 10-year-olds selling handmade paperweights. A young man recounting with artistic precision his transformative experience on the front lines of the Egyptian revolution. There are workshops […]

One of the things we’ve gotten used to in meetings at Kufunda is ants. Also millipedes. Also sitting on rocks. Dogs. Five-year olds. The occasional bat. Weird little crabbish things that dash about randomly in a panic. Straw. Wind. A careening traffic of odors – of bodies, blossoms, life. Tana’s last post was about reclaiming […]

In my last post, I talked about the enlivening effect of seeing every person as belonging to our social purpose organizations. I mentioned Social Identity Theory, which explains how difficult holding such a universal intention can be. Social Identity Theory offers a particularly dispiriting explanation of how crudely we construct our identities through the groups […]

I’m seeing it again. The tilt toward everything. Most people say it is impossible. That community is always closed. That we only know where we belong when we know whom and what we have barred. In a review of several books on community participation, Malcolm Payne argues that community identity is necessarily formed through a […]

Rennie and I have spent an emotion-filled couple of weeks leaving our home and friends in Montreal and flying across the globe to our new temporary home in Kufunda Village, Zimbabwe. Contrary to the title of this post, Kufunda is quite land-locked, nestled under a large canopy of trees on a farm outside of Harare, […]

In the late 90s I was involved in getting a grassroots school reform movement off the ground in Baltimore City. One of the first schools that agreed to participate was exceptionally low performing and lacked really basic resources like textbooks, a library, a gymnasium, and a cafeteria. Its team of dedicated teachers and administrators were […]

Organization Unbound is a global learning network of activists, community workers, and social entrepreneurs who believe that the best way for our organizations to create deep and lasting change in the world is to embody it.

We learn from and support social purpose organizations seeking to strengthen their impact by more consciously aligning their internal practices with their broader social change goals.